


Have You Seen the Stars Tonite

by rosewindow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 01:13:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/681007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewindow/pseuds/rosewindow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly muses about life on board the "Napoleon."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Have You Seen the Stars Tonite

**Author's Note:**

> For okaywolf.
> 
> Recommended Listening: Blows Against the Empire by Jefferson Starship  
> Recommended Watching: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Molly had never had much free time aboard the _Bartholomew_. Not to complain or anything. She’d loved it. Of course she’d loved it; practicing medicine on a deep space cruiser had always been her dream. But, well, there it was. She didn’t get much free time on the _Napoleon_ either. They ran a skeleton crew - computers did most of the work, and wasn’t _that_ amazing - so everyone had several jobs to do. She frequently had to clean things up, or, well, not _make_ food - it was all in prepackaged blocks - but distribute it. And she’d had to improve her skills at trauma medicine smartish, and learn how to tell if various substances were counterfeit or not (and in turn learn how to counterfeit other substances). So, life wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination, but she was in _space_. And really, what more had she wanted out of life? So Molly spent most of her free time up on A-Deck, watching the stars drift by.

The only problem with this plan was that it made it easier for the other crew members to find her.

“He’s at it again.”

Molly sighed, but didn’t move. “He’ll pull himself out of it eventually.”

“We have a meet-up in a few hours.”

Molly sighed again. That was a problem.

Normally, they floated through space without encountering anyone else for days if not longer. But these meet-ups were how they financed the operation, and Molly liked being airborne, fed, and not dying in the blackness of space, so yes, it was important to get their captain back in the land of the living (or at least human). Not important enough that she couldn’t take her sweet time, though.

She stuck a hand up in the air, and waggled it around. Seb sighed, but walked over to pull her to her feet. She skipped a step, and leaned against him to stay upright. “Gravity must be a bit off,” she said with a wink.

He smirked back. “Is now the time, Miss Hooper?”

“Doctor Hooper,” she replied, patting his cheek. “Right. Let’s see the patient, shall we?”

The _Napoleon_ was small. Smaller than the _Bartholomew_ certainly, though most ships in the sky were; that thing was a behemoth. It didn’t take them long to make their way to the computer room. Seb swung the door aside, and gestured in frustration. Molly peered in carefully; this was the eeriest room on the ship, and she never really liked having to do this.

The gravity had been turned off. Molly’s ponytail started floating by her face as she leaned her torso into the room. Except for small walkways, all six surfaces in the room were covered in softly glowing or blinking or undulating lights, and screens of every size, with a multitude of wires and cables linking everything. It was the farthest thing from standard issue computer processing that Molly had ever seen. Computers could be used to control simple things like oxygen levels, and gravity, and thrust, but the intricacies of safe and effective space travel were beyond even the most complicated of systems. Except for these.

Jim hovered in the middle of the space he had built, a web of wires and tools drifting around him like satellites around a sun. Molly pushed off, and carefully pulled herself along until she was in his orbit too. His eyes were closed and he was muttering to himself, fingers moving as if he was typing. No wait, he was actually typing she realized as she noticed that the uplink in the back of his neck was hooked up.

She hung there, kicking her legs idly to keep mostly upright and away from the walls. She could tell this was going to be a tricky one, so she would taking her time. Seb watched impatiently from the doorway, but she waved him away. He stomped off to doing something no doubt important and violent. Fine. Somebody should be on watch anyway.

First things first. Molly waved the tools and most of the wires away, putting things where they went if she knew, and batting them towards the hall and the gravity if she didn’t. Second step: make sure nothing could get broken, including Jim and herself, if he reacted badly to step four. Next: wait. This was the worst step. Because the uplink was in his head, she was never entirely sure when it was safe to pull him out. She waited until his fingers stopped moving and his muttering had trailed off, and, finally, yanked the cord.

Jim jerked in surprise, and reached out for something Molly couldn’t see. “Oh,” he whispered.

He shivered, and turned neatly to face her. She was always amazed at how easily he moved in zero gravity. “Where’s Seb? I was just telling him-”

“It was the uplink. You were talking to the computer.”

“I wonder why the computer decided to look like Seb today,” he mused. “Normally, she looks like you.”

Molly blushed. “You’ve uh, you’ve got a meet-up coming. You’d better get ready.”

He floated past her, brushing a finger against her cheek as he did, and touched down with a grace that she envied. “What would I do without you, Molly dearest?” he asked, before vanishing towards the personal quarters.

Not entirely sure what to do next, Molly straightened up a bit more and wandered back up to A-Deck. Jim and Seb would want it for the meet-up - it was the most impressive space on the ship and it always did to make a good impression - but it was free for now, and Molly still had a bit of free time.

She knew that what they did was illegal, she wasn’t an idiot, but she did try not to think about it too hard. She’d never seen any violence, but the wounds she treated on Seb and the various other men and women that came through her infirmary weren’t the kinds caused by normal space travel. There was also the fact that her payment didn’t come on any sort of regular schedule. It always came, but usually in fits and bursts linked to the trips they’d taken recently. For someone who’d gone through the ranks on a government vessel, Molly was surprisingly okay with this knowledge. It was probably a sort of “honor among thieves” thing, but Molly honestly felt more comfortable here than she ever had on the _Bartholomew_. Seb and Jim weren’t nice - far from it - but they respected her, and that was, well, nice.

She wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her chin on them. She hadn’t been there from the start; hadn’t been there when they hijacked the ship (though Jim recounted the story so often and with such enthusiasm that she often felt as if she had been). She’d joined up with the crew of the bonnie _Napoleon_ later on, when Jim had crossed one of the scientist on board the _Bartholomew_  and had to use Molly as part of an improvised escape plan. She hadn’t looked back though, which she found worrying and strange only in retrospect.

The door to the deck slid open behind her.

“Thinking again, Molly dearest? I won’t stand for it. I’m supposed to be the intelligent one around here.”

“Just contemplating my place in the universe,” she responded.

“Your place is right here,” Jim said, offering her a hand up.

She took his hand, but didn’t stand yet. She stretched her other hand out wordlessly, and Seb took it. The stars spun outside the window in a constantly shifting dance. Molly smiled, and pulled herself to standing.

“Right, gentlemen. What’s on the table for today?”


End file.
